Following a cancer scare, Frank Squeo started Baking Memories 4 Kids in 2012. He organizes volunteers to bake and sell cookies, using the proceeds to send children with life-threatening illnesses for a weeklong tour of Florida amusement parks, giving families indelible memories.
In 2015, Squeo was included as part of HOPE Week, the New York Yankees’ annual initiative spotlighting people and groups doing good work in the community. Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia and other Yankees surprised him and baked for hours. The club also gave $10,000, but the coverage his story received inspired more donations. Baking Memories 4 Kids went from sending five families per year to 30.
“Nobody does it like the Yankees,” Squeo said. “They’re showing the world people that need to be shown.”
HOPE Week — which stands for Helping Others Persevere and Excel — launched in 2009 with a five-day initiative to heighten the impact of the franchise’s community efforts. It has since raised about $1 million for the charities involved. Player participation over the years has been almost 100%, whether from future Hall of Famers such as Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera or rarely used reserves, and the franchise’s minor league affiliates have also held their own HOPE Weeks.
“HOPE Week intersects humanity with baseball,” said Jason Zillo, Yankees vice president of communications and media relations, who came up with the idea. “Anything that we do is usually under the microscope. We turn that microscope and that spotlight onto these people and their stories so that more people know about them.”
To commemorate the 15th edition (it was not held in 2020 because of the pandemic), the Yankees are embracing a theme for the first time — the stories of all five individuals being honored were discovered via social media. For example, on Wednesday the Yankees will recognize Experience Camps, a no-cost program for children who are grieving the loss of a parent, sibling or primary caregiver. Experience Camps finds the majority of its campers through TikTok. Yankees players will accompany the kids to a Dave & Buster’s in Pelham, N.Y., just north of the Bronx, and the campers and the group’s founder, Sara Deren, will be guests of the team at batting practice before that night’s game.
“We’re at the point now where you understand that you’ve created a tradition for a team and an organization that really wasn’t exactly looking for more tradition,” Zillo said. “HOPE Week is probably going to be here a lot longer than I am.”
So will the impact that it has had. Ken Trush’s 12-year-old son, Daniel, suffered a brain aneurysm. He was in a coma for 30 days and the hospital for a year. Music played a role in his recovery, and the family started Daniel’s Music Foundation, which offered free weekly classes for people with disabilities — until the Yankees honored them in 2011. Daniel performed on a Broadway stage that day. While watching, Ken and his wife, Nancy, decided to do more. The foundation soon opened a music wcenter with a half-dozen studios and countless more programs. “That day was the tipping point for us,” Ken Trush said. “We went from a program to a commitment to become an organization.”
Daniel also performed the national anthem during HOPE Week and joined the Yankees’ postgame handshake line. At the time, Trush told Zillo he would have been thrilled with just that recognition and a donation, but Trush will always remember Zillo’s reply, which he has adopted as his own mantra: “That would have been good. We only do great here.”
